The Boys Are Back In Town
by Flatpickluvr
Summary: Our favorite men decide it's time to pack up and leave Princeton. There's a road trip involved, but the story isn't about the road trip. It's about their lives after they arrive at their new home in St. Louis, Missouri! Lots of angst, lots of interesting medical drama and music too.
1. Chapter 1

The Boys are Back in Town

**Yes, I'm still writing House fic! After the series finale I lost my source of encouragement to keep writing House fic, but I'm back on board now! I don't know how long this story will end up being, but here goes. This story more or less follows canon up until the end of season 5, but after he gets out of Mayfield, it's pretty much AU from there. For the purposes of this story, the events of seasons 6, 7 and 8 never happened. House does not waste months of his life in a sexual relationship with his boss. He does not pass out in a burning building or fake his death. He is not constantly in a downward spiral waiting for someone to save him. As to whatever may or may not be wrong with Wilson, all I can tell you is that if there is something wrong with him, it isn't cancer. **

**I'm currently listening to Leon Redbone's recording of "Ain't Misbehavin'" which seems so appropriate for this chapter, and, in fact, the entire story. If you're a Leon Redbone fan from back in the early days of Saturday Night Live when he was a frequent musical guest, he's back on tour again in the Midwest and it's well worth going to one of his shows. His style has only gotten better with age.**

_Riding off into the sunset together, right leg flying through the gear changes like nothing had ever happened. What's left of our hair whipping in the wind. My partner's right behind me, letting Kyle out to play. Kyle's obviously not quite ready to break the speed limit yet, but even cruising at a sedate 40 miles per hour, we're in heaven._

He and Wilson pulled off the narrow, two lane highway into the nicest inn they could find in central Pennsylvania. For once, Wilson was the one with the leg problems, not House. Wilson had let Kyle out to play. Kyle had never ridden a motorcycle at all, let alone ridden one cross country. They'd bought the bikes in Princeton in celebration of their decision to start a new life in the midwest. There were simply too many painful memories for both of them in Princeton to continue living there. They'd reached the mutual decision that, in order to change their lives for the better, they had to start with a move.

It was Wilson's idea to get the bikes. He'd sold the loft, burned every picture of Samantha, Julie and Bonnie, donated most of his things to Goodwill, and packed whatever he still needed that would fit in saddlebags and a backpack.

Wilson had been leaving work every day for the last few months with headaches, stomachaches, toothaches, and all sorts of other aches. Pangs of middle age? Maybe, but the frequency and severity were increasing. He couldn't tell House, but House had probably already secretly noticed these things anyway. Wilson was about 80% sure that this was all stress related, but he couldn't tell House any of this because House would then stalk him like Gil Renard in "The Fan", dragging Wilson through countless tests trying to diagnose a non existent physical ailment. On the other hand, there was still about a 20% chance that these things could really be related and have a physical cause, so Wilson decided on at least trying one test - an MRI - just to head House off at the pass. Lord knows Wilson had plenty to be stressed about.

When he kicked House out of the loft, it wasn't because he didn't want House there. It was because he was convinced this relationship would fail just like all the others had. In all reality, he now realized, he had just as much emotional baggage as House did, maybe even more. Rather than do the adult thing and work through his problems with the only person in his life who cared enough to stick around, he took what he thought was the easy way out and asked House to leave. Yes, it happened a long time ago, as had his failed marriages, and the sexual relationship with his patient, but everything was just rapidly becoming too much to bear on his own.

House had been hurt badly when Wilson kicked him out, but House eventually came to realize that it was a good thing. He realized that he could survive outside of Mayfield, living on his own. It was time for Big Bird to leave Wilson's nest. After House recovered from the initial hurt, he began to think of it as Wilson showing him some much needed tough love.

A few months after Wilson kicked House out, House began to notice symptoms in Wilson. He simply could not let those symptoms go undiagnosed. No, he'd been down that road himself, and he couldn't let Wilson go the same route. Wilson was on a downward spiral, and House had to stop it.

"You look awful," he'd said abruptly to Wilson in the cafeteria one day. "Look at you. You're not sleeping. Don't even try to lie to me. You know my lie detector is never wrong." Those brilliant blue eyes drilled holes at Wilson, but even at that, Wilson lied.

"Too many cases. I guess I have to cut my workload down. Maybe I should join a group practice."

Over the cheeseburger he'd just stolen from Wilson, House just stared at him that much more intently. "Lie number one."

"I know," Wilson hedged, but just a bit. "I have a lot of stress. I have headaches at night. I'm going for an MRI."

Having slowly and deliberately eaten every last morsel of Wilson's cheeseburger, House reached for Wilson's fries in slow motion, never once taking his eyes off of Wilson. "You don't need an MRI."

"Yeah," Wilson quipped a little too quickly, in a failed attempt to throw House off the track. "I need to sleep for about a week. Then I'll be fine. Seriously, House. I know something's wrong. I'm getting an MRI."

"Then you're wasting a huge wad of money that I could put to much better use myself. Like, oh, I don't know - loan it to me so I can buy a nice new Gibson." House pressed on, not believing any of the obvious evasions currently coming out of Wilson's mouth. "You don't need an MRI."

House had noticed the exhaustion, the lack of appetite, the personality changes and the weight loss. Based on Wilson's dietary changes, he guessed Wilson was having toothaches, too. He wasn't surprised about the headaches, either.

"Don't tell me there's nothing wrong with me. Isn't that what the idiots at Cuddy's hospital here told you years ago? Look what happened. I know there's something wrong with me. If you're not going to be there for me when I get the tests I need, then go to hell. Prove that I was right to kick you out," Wilson said defensively.

"I never said there was nothing wrong with you," House said through a mouthful of fries. "I said you didn't need an MRI. You do what you think is best, though. I'll be there through all the useless tests, and when they're done, you'll be several thousand dollars poorer, I'll still be here and we can get you what you really need."


	2. Chapter 2

Boys Are Back In Town chapter 2

In the MRI machine, Wilson was nervously twiddling with anything within his reach. Actually, he wasn't nervous. _I gotta put on a good show for House. Make him think I am really worried._

Cuddy, in one of her crazier moments, had decided to listen to the Radiology department head when he submitted his budget asking for money to upgrade the MRI suite. Many thousands of dollars were wasted on painting the walls and adding homey little touches meant to make patients less nervous. Never mind the fact that patients in an MRI usually could care less about the decor inside the room. Kissing ass was something Cuddy did for a living. House could never figure out why she was constantly begging benefactors for donations; given the fact that PPTH was a for-profit healthcare institution, there should have been enough profit for services provided that begging for donations should not have been necessary. Had PPTH been a not-for-profit charity hospital, of course private donations would have been an important financial resource. As it was, House knew that PPTH was doing well financially, and should not have had to rely on private donations so much.

Even though she obviously liked kissing ass, she also had a good business acumen, and she knew a smart business move when she saw one coming. Even in Cuddy's mind, decorating the MRI suite would have been considered an enormous waste of money. House wondered why she would do something so crazy. He figured she must be sleeping with that particular department head. Either that or she'd had a particularly good night with the benefactor who donated the money for the project. _The Lucas Douglas Memorial MRI Suite. _ House snickered at that thought.

For whatever reason, Cuddy decided to approve the crazy expense. Suddenly, the MRI suite was painted mauve, expensive artwork was hung on one wall, and a gizmo was installed on the MRI that would project pictures of birds, butterflies, or some other supposedly calming scenes on the other walls. There are open MRIs and closed MRIs. PPTH had an MRI suite consisting of two rooms. One was an open MRI and one was a closed MRI. In the open MRI, yeah, patients could see the walls, but people getting a really important medical test usually didn't care about that stuff anyway. In the closed MRI, it was useless to decorate anything since patients stuck in the machine could not see anything beyond the inside of the machine. The MRI manufacturer made virtual reality goggles that the patients could wear inside the closed MRI, allowing them to see different scenery, but nobody ever wanted to wear the things because they were usually too worried about the test to care about anything else.

Each of the two MRI rooms in the suite had been similarly redecorated and upgraded.

The visual and auditory effects gizmos in each room were pretty much useless to everyone else except a maverick doctor who just wanted to play with the equipment and screw with the patient stuck in the machine.

With House behind the controls, suddenly the room was filled with the sounds of birds chirping and scenes of a sunny beach with seagulls flying overhead and pooping on the poor sucker laying underneath in the MRI. They were in the closed MRI room and Wilson couldn't see any of it, but he could hear House snickering over the open microphone. "Close your mouth," House announced over the mike. "The birds are pooping everywhere."

Wilson burst out laughing. _Clunk, clunk, clunk _went the MRI as House redirected his attention to studying the images in front of him. "Take thin slices," Wilson announced from inside the MRI. "Shut your mouth," House replied, "or I'll grant a miracle and give the birds better aim."

House deliberately left the mike from the control room open. He positioned his iPOD in front of the mike. He deliberately selected music that would irritate Wilson the most, a dirge-like Bach fugue, and played it at top volume while he considered and tried to confirm his theory that this was all a huge waste of time. The puzzle changed when House finished examining the images before him with a fine tooth comb; images that confirmed there was nothing physically wrong with Wilson's brain. He propped his legs up on the console, switched the music off, and considered his next move.

Option one, of course, was to harangue Wilson about the needless test, yank him out of the scanner and remind his partner for the millionth time that he was an idiot.

Option two was to shut up and concede that Wilson might actually be sick. Sure, the body was most likely fine. But there's more to a person than their body. House began to drum his fingers on the console surface, playing with anything within reach in alert anticipation of the puzzle he was presented with. _Oh, this is gonna be fun!_

House had, for years, decried psychiatric practitioners. He of course recognized that the field of psychiatry was a legitimate and interesting field of medicine. He'd read enough psychiatric journals to have reached the conclusion early on that psychiatric illnesses were well documented. Psychiatric diagnoses and treatment plans were thoroughly supported by research. He didn't have a problem respecting the field of psychiatric medicine. He had a problem respecting most of its practitioners that he'd met. Psychiatrists, psychologists, whatever. House considered most of them to be quacks.

But that changed when he'd suffered his own psychiatric illness. He'd met many psychiatrists at medical conventions and in daily dealings with people at the hospital though out the years , and he'd had a particularly frustrating experience with a psychiatrist when he had his infarction. His physicians thought he was a crazy drug seeker when he injected himself with Demerol, so a psychiatrist had been called for a consult. Before he had his own psychiatric illness, House thought that most of the psychiatrists he'd met tended to constantly defend their profession, talking about their specialty as though they were on a par with God Himself. House used to think that people who had to defend their profession were not confident enough in their professional abilities to be proficient at their jobs. In other words, he thought they were all quacks. Of course it probably didn't help that House belittled and berated them, calling them idiots to their faces, forcing them into a position of having to defend their specialty or just give up and fold under the pressure of House's bitterness toward them. Some of them probably were idiots, but no doubt there were some good psychiatrists in the bunch that just couldn't hold their own against a formidable personality like House's.

Life pulls some nasty punches, though, and even the mightiest fall sooner or later. House had eventually been forced to accept psychiatric help. His experiences in Mayfield and subsequently had shown him that there are times when nobody has all the answers, but there are psychiatrists like Nolan who had most of the answers most of the time and could equip their patients with the tools to find answers too. Just like House, Nolan had the confidence to do what was right for the patient, even when the consequences for doing the right thing might make "doing the right thing" too risky. For example, threatening to transfer House to another psych hospital after Freedom Master jumped out of that parking garage. Threatening to transfer him at that time was the right thing to do because it had the desired effect and made House realize once and for all that he really did need Nolan's help and he needed to stay at Mayfield. But the potential risk of course was that Nolan's own bosses, the administrative board, could have forced him to follow through on his threat to transfer House out. Nolan's threat could easily have backfired. Nolan knew that and took the risk anyway. It paid off.

While Wilson waited inside the MRI, House pondered the considerable irony that now _he _was mentally healthy and _Wilson _might very well need psychiatric care.

"Are you even still there?" Wilson called out from inside his 21st century General Electric cocoon. "House!" he cried out. Claustrophobia is an awful thing.

"Leave a message after the beep," House droned. "Beeeeeeeep"

"Get me out of here!" Wilson cried frantically.

House waited a few seconds longer, until he thought Wilson might just explode out of there on his own, like toothpaste when the tube is squeezed too forcefully. House replied "Relax, Wilson. I'm just joshin' you. Let's get you out of there before you crap your pants." With that, House pressed the button and a very diaphoretic Wilson emerged from the MRI.

"You kept me prisoner in there after you knew the test was done!" Wilson panted, eagerly jumping off the MRI table and glaring at House.

That wasn't entirely true, of course. House's mind had simply kicked into overdrive when he saw the obviously healthy images, like it always did when presented with interesting cases. Unfortunately, Wilson had to wait inside the MRI machine a few agonizing minutes longer than necessary while House was temporarily distracted by the irony of the situation. For years, Wilson insisted that House was the one who needed psychiatric care. Now the tables were turned.


	3. Chapter 3

Boys Are Back In Town chapter 3

**This is going to sound like I hate Cuddy, and I really don't. I just dislike the way her character was written the last few seasons. I thought her character was well written up until sometime in season 5 and then her character started changing into someone (fictional, remember) that I just didn't like. I don't blame that on the actress who portrayed the character; I blame it on the writers. And I thought it was very sad that Lisa E was not even part of the series finale. We got to see clips of her that were taped before her contract ran out at the end of Season 7, but the clips were part of "Swan Song", not the series finale. The actress Lisa Edelstein was an important part of the show and I think it's sad that she wasn't part of "Everybody Dies."**

**On the show, the way PPTH was run was not the way real hospitals are run, and that's an important part of my story. Hospital administrators are ultimately responsible for the way their hospitals are run. Hospital administrators have to answer for their policies and decisions just like everyone else does. All the characters in House-dom clearly have their faults, and Cuddy is no different. I'm not singling her out as being any worse than anyone else, even if this chapter might suggest otherwise. I'm simply making the character responsible for the way her hospital is or was run. This chapter is important to establish one reason why House and Wilson would want to leave PPTH. Also, remember, this story takes place after House was discharged from Mayfield and everything else that happens after that is pretty much AU. **

**Also, please remember if you reviewed anonymously, as a guest, you probably won't get a reply from me. I like to reply to each reviewer, but in order to do so, the reviewer must log in to the site first. Thanks!**

With the tables turned, now, there was a new part of the puzzle to fill in. _How to help Wilson without making him think I think he's crazy. He'll never go for it if he thinks that I think he's gone bonkers._

When House and Wilson were still employed at PPTH, PPTH had some unorthodox policies. House always used to wonder about some of the odd policies coming out of Cuddy's office that affected his department. Given the fact that the hospital was swimming in profits thanks to Cuddy's ability to get money from a turnip, House always considered it odd that his department was funded like it was about to shut down any day.

For example…

At any given moment at PPTH and in any other hospital, patient transportation aides were visible all over because their job was to transport patients from one place to another inside the hospital. Either transportation aides, volunteers, or nurse assistants transported stable patients. Nurses and other therapists transported critically ill, unstable patients. Doctors never transported patients anywhere unless they were just coming out of surgery. Doctors normally would order the test or procedure, and then the nurse caring for the patient would arrange someone to escort the patient to the procedure room.

That process applied to every other department at PPTH except House's. Early on in House's career at PPTH, he would do just like any other physician at PPTH would do. He would order the test or procedure, and the patient's nurse would take over from there. If the patient needed to be taken to another area of the hospital for the procedure, the nurse would make those arrangements.

Within a few months after House's employment at PPTH, though, he suddenly started getting irritating calls from nurses because the nurses were being told that transporters were no longer available for House's patients. Apparently someone issued a new policy that House's patients had to be transported to their procedures by House himself or by his physician employees. Why anyone would expect a disabled person to push an occupied wheel chair, stretcher or bed anywhere was just plain crazy, so of course House had no option but to delegate that chore to his physician employees. He wasn't even allowed to hire his own assistant, who could have helped with patient transportation to procedures.

So within a few months of being hired at PPTH, he began to think that Cuddy was already secretly stacking the chips against him. When he approached her about why he wasn't allowed to hire an assistant and why his physician employees were forced to transport their patients everywhere, Cuddy had told him that he'd pissed off too many transporters and nobody wanted to transport his patients anymore. He remembered that his reply to Cuddy was something like "You idiot! I don't even talk to patients if I can avoid it. What makes you think I'd talk to transporters? I've never spoken to any of them. You pay them to do their job. If they refuse to do their job, that's their problem; take it out on them, not me. I need my physicians actually doing their jobs, not wasting time pushing beds and wheel chairs around."

The same problem was apparent in the process of performing those tests and procedures. Many of the tests and procedures House's team ordered did not require a physician to actually perform them. In fact, most of the tests and procedures his team ordered were well within the scope of practice for registered nurses, respiratory therapists, phlebotomists, and other technicians to actually perform. In the real world, and elsewhere at PPTH, doctors would order the tests or procedures, and nurses or technicians specifically trained in that area would actually carry out the test or procedure. The doctor's expertise was in evaluating the results of the test or procedure, not in actually performing it.

Again, within a few months' after House's hire at PPTH, suddenly nurses and technicians were no longer permitted to perform procedures or tests ordered by House or his team. It was the same problem. Hospital policy had changed, and suddenly House and his team were required to perform all of their own tests and procedures themselves. House had heard the popular opinion, gossip if you will, that he'd pissed off so many nurses and technicians that they just refused to do procedures that he'd ordered. He'd also heard gossip that apparently he thought they were too untrustworthy or incompetent to do the tests or procedures the proper way.

That, in fact, was not the case. In reality, House rarely had the time or the desire to interact that much with anyone outside of his own department. He knew he probably had pissed off a few nurses and techs, but he pissed off a lot of people, and anyway, that was beside the point. House knew that was not a valid excuse for not doing one's job. The nurses and techs would never refuse to carry out his or his team's orders unless they had a valid reason to do so, "Valid reason" meant some legal or medical justification for refusing to carry out an appropriate physician's order. Even at that, a refusal to carry out a physician's order would require a lot of supporting documentation to back up why the order was not carried out. They couldn't refuse to carry out an appropriate order (or transport a patient or whatever) just because someone told them to refuse.

So after a few months of establishing his own department, House and his team were not only transporting their patients everywhere, but they were also required to attend additional training in order to be able to perform their own tests and procedures, things that physicians routinely order but rely on other trained professionals to actually perform. His fellows rarely went home because about a quarter of their days were spent doing things that they should have been able to utilize other healthcare professionals to do.

So while Cuddy did have good business acumen, she also had her faults, and apparently changing hospital policy because of a personal grudge against one employee was one of them. House was no fool, of course, and he'd long ago put two and two together and came to the conclusion - rightly or wrongly- that she or someone else in the administrative department was making these unethical and unorthodox policy changes that just affected his department because of some personal grudge against him. In a way, PPTH felt like it did back in the days of Vogler. It was crazy, but that was the only conclusion he could arrive at. The other unfortunate conclusion he'd arrived at early on was that, questionable policies or not, PPTH was his last and final hope of permanent employment. He really thought he had to settle for the slightly crazy behavior of his boss because he was also slightly crazy and he'd been fired by so many other institutions that nobody else would hire him. He and Cuddy had a stormy history together; he slept with her in college, then left, and she thought he dumped her. Years later, he wound up in her hospital as a patient, she was the supervising physician, and he wound up with a permanent disability. Whether or not the leg was her fault wasn't really the point. The point was, she was associated with it. Although he'd always publicly said he didn't blame her, secretly, he had always harbored some resentment against her for what happened to him. Even though, on some level, he knew it wasn't her fault, her very presence in his life was a daily reminder that she was also there every time his life went horribly wrong. She was there when his leg muscle died, she was there when the treatment he specifically did not want was administered to him against his will, and she was there when he lost his mind years later.

Working with someone that you've had a stormy past with is never a good idea. Interpersonal communication was never one of House's strong points, or Cuddy's either, for that matter. He and Cuddy probably should have had some tough conversations early on in his employment at PPTH, or maybe even before he decided to accept her employment offer, but nevertheless, they'd never had the open and honest discussions about their past that they probably should have had. So House's employment at PPTH was marked with this kind of "tit for tat" thing with Cuddy. They'd flirted, they'd insulted each other, they'd played pranks on each other, but never addressed anything deeper than that. Deep down, House did harbor some resentment toward Cuddy, and he figured deep down, she probably did too.

Most physicians are on staff at several hospitals so they don't spend all their time at one hospital. On the other hand, nurses and other healthcare employees are usually employed at just one institution, and in some areas, the average length of a nurse or other healthcare employee at any one given hospital is about five to seven years. There are people who last a lot longer, of course, but the average in some areas is pretty stable at about five to seven years. House was in a unique position among physicians in that he was not on staff at any other hospital. He was only on staff at PPTH, so he spent every hour on the job at PPTH, under Cuddy's micromanaging eyes, and nowhere else. Unlike other physicians, he didn't even have offices off site somewhere else where he could see patients. His only office was at PPTH. He was under a similar type of employment stress that affected other full time healthcare professionals at PPTH.

While House was wrapping things up inside the control room of the MRI suite, and Wilson was wiping the sweat off his brow and putting his clothes back on, House pondered the equation that one plus one plus one apparently doesn't always equal three. House plus Wilson plus Cuddy equalled two men who cared about each other and had a good working relationship with each other at the same time, and their boss, who really wasn't even part of the equation anymore. House had, of late, began to think about leaving PPTH specifically, and leaving Princeton in general. Just like the images of the seagulls flying all over the walls and ceiling of the MRI suite, House could see the writing on the wall that said it was time for Wilson to leave, too. Now he just had to make Wilson see the logic in that.


	4. Chapter 4

Boys are back in town chapter 4

House had taken the day off from work so that he could be with Wilson during and after the pointless MRI. Actually, it did have a point; the point was to disprove a physical ailment. They'd taken House's old Chrysler in to the hospital for Wilson's MRI.

House drove home. Wilson was unaccustomed to being a passenger in any vehicle driven by House because anytime they rode in a vehicle together, House was more than happy to let Wilson do the driving. Wilson's car wasn't exactly disabled friendly. There were times when they'd go out together in Wilson's car and House wound up driving home. It was difficult for House to get Wilson's driver's seat into a comfortable position for his long legs. When he had to drive anywhere, House always much preferred to drive his old Chrysler simply because his body fit so well in the driver's seat. The driver's seat was practically molded around his body. The damn seat was so loose, worn, and close to the floor of the car that Wilson couldn't help but stare at House, wondering how he could be so comfortable in that position.

This time, House did the driving. Wilson's nerves were so jangled because of the MRI that neither of them thought it'd be the world's best idea for Wilson to drive.

"So yeah, you're gonna tell me the MRI showed nothing, right?" Wilson said anxiously.

"No, it didn't show _nothing._ It showed _no physical abnormality._ You have a perfectly healthy brain," House said softly, taking a deep breath, while he carefully considered exactly what else he should say.

_Leave it to House to focus on the semantics, not on how I'm doing, _ Wilson ruminated. "So all my headaches, toothaches, loss of appetite, and everything else are just meaningless symptoms, indicative of nothing? You think I'm crazy? Hell, I'm beginning to think I'm crazy myself," Wilson muttered out loud.

They rolled up to a stop sign, and House looked over at Wilson. "Crazy? Let's see. You've been divorced three times, proposed again to your first ex-wife, slept with a dying patient, adopted a half-dead overweight diabetic cat who needed more care than you had time to give, gave part of your liver to a patient/fake friend/gold digger, invented fake cousin Rachel when the real girl was a total stranger named Rebecca and you couldn't remember her name and kept calling her Rachel, faked an interest in boxing just to try to win a bet that you had no hope of winning in the first place, and the list goes on. Hell, you stayed with me all these years. Some would say yes."

"But do you think I'm crazy?" Wilson asked, and then he immediately regretted asking that question.

"I think that would be like the pot calling the kettle black," House replied as he proceeded through the intersection.

"I'm not crazy," Wilson said, staring straight ahead.

"I didn't say you were." House replied solemnly. "I said 'some would say' you were."

Wilson slammed his hands down on the car's dashboard with a loud smack, forceful enough to startle House. "Never startle the driver when you're the passenger!" House said with a start. Wilson was always so even tempered that this outburst almost caused House to have an accident - in more ways than one. "Dammit, House, quit doing that! Quit being so damn literal!" Wilson yelled, flustered. "You know what? Forget the damn question. You know what I'm concerned about, but instead you want to focus on the semantics. I asked you a question and you just want to deflect. You want to focus on the words, not the meaning behind them. Just shut up and keep driving. My headache is becoming a migraine now. I just want to go home before I puke."

They continued home in silence, with Wilson holding his head in his hands trying desperately not to puke all over House's car. A simple headache plus motion sickness will do that to a person.

House was burning up inside. Apparently he'd put his foot in his mouth again, and this was not the time to risk spurring Wilson on even further. House knew from first hand, personal experience what it was like to suffer through mental illness when he didn't notice his own signs and symptoms, and his tiny inner circle of employees and employer did see them but either didn't help or didn't know what to do to help. Wilson, his only confidante, saw the symptoms of depression and psychosis and was the only person who tried to help. House knew that simply saying the words, simply offering advice or offering help, wasn't all that was necessary. He knew that the patient had to accept the help, and more importantly, admit that he needed it, for the help to do any good. House was absolutely sure that Wilson wasn't physically ill, pretty sure that Wilson was not mentally ill, but was probably approaching the same stress breaking point that House was. From experience, House knew what it was like to be a man overboard, rushing downriver toward a waterfall with everyone on either side of the river bank yelling at you to grab the life preservers, but the water's so loud you can't hear them.

They needed a change. House had the life preserver, and he was determined to make damn sure that he and Wilson had a stranglehold on it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Thanks for the kind reviews! The medicine starts in the next chapter.**

They arrived home in silence. House had a plan, but he wasn't sure this was the right time to broach said plan with Wilson. Wilson had already erupted twice in one day, and House finally decided to back off before Mount Wilson erupted again.

Wilson passive-aggressively stormed back to the bedroom, ripped his coat and tie off, and planted his butt on the bed so firmly that nobody could mistake his attitude for anything other than frustration.

House grabbed a cold beer from the fridge and reached into his pocket for the ever-present Vicodin. His leg was killing him. He hadn't popped a pill since breakfast before work because he was so preoccupied with Wilson, and his leg yelled at him in no uncertain terms, demanding more and more of his attention. But after a short internal debate, he replaced the unopened pill bottle back into his pocket. He had some thinking to do first. He hop-stepped back to the couch and flopped down into it with an enormous sigh.

The couch was really the heart of their home. Each had their favorite place to sit, and the cushions in House's place on the couch were practically molded to fit his frame. The side table on House's side of the couch had all of his favorite accoutrements on it; a Star Trek bookmark from the original movie that Kutner had given him years ago, an old 75 RPM record that had been reshaped into a coaster that Wilson gave him, a hardback copy of "Already Gone" by John Rector, his IPod docking station with an extra pair of ear buds, and an extra remote for the TV and stereo.

Wilson's side of the couch had an indentation in the seat cushion where his cell phone, always kept in his right hip pocket, left a little dent in the material. The dent didn't go all the way through. It just left a little permanent mark in the cushion. House stared at that little dent while trying to figure out what his next move should be. He couldn't leave Wilson alone, stewing back there, but he'd obviously already said the wrong thing once and he didn't want to add fuel to the fire.

His leg yelped loudly again, screaming silently at him (as if he needed a reminder) that he still hadn't had his regular dose of Vicodin; or any dose, for that matter. If he popped the top off the pill bottle, he knew Wilson would hear it and think he was medicating a guilty conscience on top of a sore leg. But guilty of what? What was House guilty of? Causing Wilson more stress? No. Saying the right thing at the wrong time or in the wrong way? Probably. In his mind, he could hear Dr. John wailing away about being in the right place at the wrong time.

Wilson probably thought House was deliberately making light of his ailments, blowing them off as if they weren't legitimate or even important, simply because House told him there was nothing physically wrong with him. _Gee, where've I heard that before?_ House mused. _Maybe now he knows what it's like for the shoe to be on the other foot._

_I do care what he thinks, _House realized with a start, almost as if he'd had one of his notorious epiphanies. _I need my pain medication and he needs his pain alleviated too. I do care what he thinks. I really do._ House always loudly proclaimed to anyone around him that he didn't care what everyone thought about the pills, the hookers, the drinking, or anything else he did. But deep down, he did care. He did care what people thought about him; not just about the pills or the hookers or the drinking, but about a lot of other things too. That tough, sarcastic, bad-ass outer shell was just his way of protecting himself against what other people thought about him. It was his force field.

But it takes a lot of power to keep a force field energized. Sooner or later an electrical storm is gonna come. House thought about what happens when lightning strikes an improperly grounded electric fence. Renders the whole thing useless and, in the process, kills anything within contact range… cows, horses, people.

The force field had to come down. Time to go back and put the fire out. The Vicodin could wait a while longer; his leg was hurting badly, but his heart hurt even worse, and Vicodin wasn't the cure for that.

A few minutes later, a familiar tall, lanky figure stood in the doorway to the bedroom, casting a shadow on the floor in front of Wilson. "Hey," House muttered, somewhat nervously twirling his cane in his fingers.

Wilson looked up at him. "If you've come to apologize for being a total jackass, don't bother. People never change, right?"

"Oh, hell," House said gently. "I'm not sorry," he said softly, limping over to sit next to Wilson. "At least not for being a jackass. But you have a problem, and I should listen. I had an epiphany out there. I do care. Just don't hold your breath waiting for me to say that again anytime soon." A little smile began to form on House's face. Just a hint of one.

Wilson exhaled and chuckled a little. "I swear, it's impossible to stay mad at you. Seriously. If I start talking, are you just going to go on about how much of an idiot I am and how boring my problems are? Pop a pill, crack a joke and limp out? Or can I really talk?"

House swallowed. "Here's how serious I am. I could have a field day with that last sentence you just uttered. But I won't. Go ahead, talk. I'm all ears."


	6. Chapter 6

"I made a terrible mistake," Wilson said, after a few moments to gauge House's sincerity.

"Patient started dialysis because the chemotherapy caused his kidneys to fail."

House looked at him strangely. "That happens sometimes. I'm sure you warned the patient about that risk ahead of time. Hell, even the nurse giving the chemo would have warned the patient about that ahead of time; that plus the myriad of other risks posed by chemo. Routine, boring, and mistake-free."

Wilson stared back at him through eyes that were distinctly starting to moisten.

"Oh God, please tell me you're not crying."

"I called nephrology for a consult. You probably know who did the consult. Anyway, when he came by to examine the patient, he did his thing, had the dialysis access put in and wrote dialysis orders." Wilson put his head back in his hands, unable to stem the tide of emotions.

"Oookkkkaaayyyy," House drew out. "I assume you're getting to the good part soon? Because this is boring so far."

"I forgot to tell the nephrologist not to use heparin during dialysis. You know, they dole out heparin during dialysis like it's water. Most dialysis patients need it during dialysis. I forgot to tell him not to order it."

"And the patient bled, I assume," House added. "Otherwise I don't see where you're going with this."

"Shut up!" Wilson hiccupped, tears sliding down his face. "He died."

THAT got House's attention. For once, House was slack-jawed. "He what?" House exclaimed.

"He had AML leukemia. Platelet count was normal, but barely. Nephrologists and oncologists look at hematology labs differently. A nephrologist sees a normal platelet count and thinks _it's ok to use heparin during dialysis_. An oncologist or hematologist sees a normal platelet count in someone with leukemia and thinks _it may be normal but it's still too low to risk giving heparin._ I was in another room seeing another patient when he was in the patient's room doing the nephrology consult, and I didn't get a chance to talk to him afterward. I kept thinking I should call him and let him know I don't want my patient getting heparin, but I forgot to call him."

"So I'm guessing that's where you think you made your mistake. You think you killed the guy because you forgot to call a nephrologist and tell him not to use heparin during dialysis," House surmised out loud.

"I had a headache at the time. A bad one. Worse than today's. I thought I was getting a migraine. I took some ibuprofen in my office and thought I really should try to get home before the headache worsens. I just wanted to go home. I kept thinking I'll call the nephrologist after I get home. I got home, popped some more ibuprofen and fell asleep. Totally forgot to call the nephrologist. The next morning while I was rounding on my patients, my pager went off. I was paged stat to the dialysis room. My patient hadn't even been on dialysis thirty minutes. They started his treatment like normal, gave the first dose of heparin just like the nephrologist ordered, and thirty minutes later the patient had uncontrollable GI bleeding. He was rushed off to radiology, and they pumped him full of platelets and everything they could think of to stop the bleeding, but it was too late. He died." Wilson was blubbering full force now. There was no pretense about trying to be objective about this.

After a few moments, House touched Wilson on the shoulder. Wilson looked up into those brilliant blue eyes. "Ok, so let me get this straight. The nephrologist read the chart during the consult, right?"

"I would think so. Before I start rounds every morning I always review my patients' charts. I read the nephrologist's consult note first, then I saw my patient before he went down to dialysis. It seemed apparent from what he wrote that he'd also read everyone else's entries in the chart," Wilson replied.

"So the nephrologist must have read the chart or else you'd be calling him an idiot just like I'm about to. Anyway, Dr. Dimwit read the chart, and never once called you to actually talk to you? See, that's why I have underlings. They talk to the other doctors so I don't have to. Dr. Idiot did the consult, had the dialysis access placed, and wrote the dialysis orders all without talking to you. I know that your conscience won't accept the fact that medicine isn't an exact science and sometimes things just happen. I doubt the family's malpractice attorney would accept that either. There may be guilt here, but the only thing you're guilty of is blaming yourself for something that wasn't your fault. You blame yourself for forgetting to call the nephrologist, and you think your forgetfulness led to the patient's death. If anyone is to blame here, it's the nephrologist for not calling you. The specialist always has a face to face or voice to voice discussion with the referring physician. Like I said, talking to referring physicians is one reason I have underlings."

"If I hadn't had the damn headache, I'd have been thinking more clearly, and I wouldn't have forgotten to call him," Wilson said. "The platelet count was 150,000. The lower limit of normal is 150,000. I would never have given any amount of heparin. 150,000 is normal, but too low to risk giving heparin."

"I think you know you didn't do anything wrong, so there must be something else behind this meltdown. Either that or there's something seriously wrong with my people watching skills," House said with a hint of a smile. "What else happened?"

"I ran down there after I got the page, and they were in the process of rushing him off to radiology to try to find the bleed. They were pushing the bed and I followed right behind. I must have stepped in some of the blood because it was all over my shoes when I got to radiology with him. Since he was puking blood, they did an upper endoscopy thinking it was an upper GI bleed. It was, but it was coming out of other places too. They nuked the upper GI bleed but the bleeding in other places was rapidly getting worse. They pumped him full of platelets and Vitamin K and everything else they could think of to stop the bleeding, but it was too late. While the OR was being prepped for him, he died in radiology. They coded him for 45 minutes. I got a couple of voice mails during the code. Of course I couldn't get to them until long after the whole disaster was over with, but one of the voice mail messages was from Bonnie."

"Oh, God," House muttered. It had to be bad.

"Hector got hit by a car and the vet couldn't save him."

"Hector, the one who was born while Methuselah was still alive? The flea-bitten thing who chewed up everything I owned?" House said softly. He would never admit it out loud but he'd grown to love Hector. House, who tried not to foster any attachments to any living things, had begrudgingly grown attached to the loveable old mutt. Hector was old even when House took care of him some years back, so he had to be truly ancient by now. House guessed he had to be about sixteen years old.

"How old was he?"

"Seventeen. And before you say 'he lived a long life; it's his time', no, it wasn't his time. Hector was the only thing Bonnie and I shared by the time our marriage ended. We loved him like he was our child. Our only child. Bonnie called and left a message to let me know that he had died, and to ask me where I wanted him to be buried."

"And I'm guessing you were home by the time you got a chance to call Bonnie back, having the motherlode of all headaches. I'm guessing you had just popped your second dose of ibuprofen and you were probably working on a martini too. Why didn't you call me first?" House asked.

"Because the first thing I always think of when I'm having a bad day is, 'I should call House so he can pick me apart.' I called Bonnie, and she said since she didn't hear back from me soon enough, they cremated Hector at the vet. They cremated him. They disposed of his ashes at the vet. 'Disposed of his ashes' she said. I couldn't even bury him," Wilson sobbed. "I couldn't bury my dog. She didn't give me the chance."

"You lost a patient and your dog in traumatic deaths on the same day," and House was about to continue with his thought when Wilson interjected. "Yeah, let's see how much fun you can have with that one."

A hornet couldn't have stung House worse than Wilson's words just did.

"Ok, I can either get all sappy on you and let you cry on my shoulder, or remind you for the umpteenth time that death is a part of life. People die. In my world, people includes pets," House said to an astonished Wilson.

"I don't know why I'm pissed that you would say that. I should have expected it, actually. I should have known you wouldn't care," Wilson replied.

"I do care, Wilson. It's just that nothing I could say would make the hurt go away. People die. The living go on living until we do the same damn thing."

"That might be your definition of grief," Wilson replied sadly, "but it isn't mine. There are things you could say that might make the hurt go away. You just don't care enough to say them. I'm shocked that you haven't beaten me over the head with how much of an idiot I am and then dragged me off to a bar somewhere to get loaded. That may be how you deal with grief, by avoiding it, numbing it to oblivion, and pretending it doesn't exist. I don't."

"Actually, I don't say the words because I don't utter meaningless clichés. Anything I could say would just be a meaningless attempt to pat you on your back, say 'it'll be ok', tell you to 'buck up', say 'I'm there for you'. All a bunch of meaningless, trite words. Actions mean something; not words."


End file.
